


I heard a whisper on my shoulder (pretending life is worth the fight)

by ifyouresure



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Post-Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-24
Updated: 2016-06-24
Packaged: 2018-09-20 08:06:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9482135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifyouresure/pseuds/ifyouresure
Summary: “Sometimes,” the Machine says into the darkness surrounding them—surroundingShaw—voice flat and emotionless, and Shaw wouldn’t be able to imagine Root’s face even if she tried, “I still talk to her.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> Re-post after deleting.
> 
> Originally posted on June 24, 2016; re-posted on January 27, 2017.

Root’s headstone bears no name, and if it weren’t for the Machine whispering Root’s words in her ear, Shaw might wonder whether Root had ever been real at all.

By some coincidence—or by design—they all end up buried in the same cemetery. Shaw had recovered Root’s body, after it was all over, had even reinserted her cochlear implant, and buried Root again, with Root’s own lilting voice murmuring instructions in her ear. The ground beneath her headstone is still upturned and fresh, an ugly black colour like coffee grinds, identical to the soil a minute’s walk away.

Somehow, Reese and Finch end up in the same plot, one above the other, a couple rows down from Root’s. There is only one plaque marking their grave, one grave number.

“Double depth. They do that sometimes, when there isn’t enough space,” the Machine supplies without prompting, but in Root’s voice, it’s all the more unconvincing.

Even in death, Shaw thinks, John—or what’s left of him, anyway—is still protecting Harold, like the face of the moon that the Earth sees, and the one that hides in the shadows behind it.

“So who’s that one for, then?” Shaw asks aloud, the toe of her boot pointed towards the unmarked earth to the right of their grave. The Machine doesn’t answer; Shaw blinks. “She wouldn’t want to be buried here,” she says. “Beside his grave, maybe. But not this one.” The Machine pings in her ear, but is otherwise silent.

There are two other graves somewhere in the world, empty, but headed with stones that are engraved with John’s and Harold’s names. People, Shaw thinks, that had cared when they’d died. Carter, too, had been buried in a much nicer cemetery, was a decorated officer of the law, former military, and had a headstone that had been lined with flowers the last time Shaw had visited.

Root only had one grave, and no one in the world who knew she was gone besides the few people who were still alive that Shaw could count on one hand. No one would remember her. All that was left of her was a headstone: no name, engraved with a six-digit serial. 050313. Reduced to a number. Bits in the system. Noise. Shaw wonders briefly whether there had been a grave waiting for her in this cemetery, too.

“What’s with all the doom and gloom, Sameen?” the Machine says in Root’s voice, after Shaw hasn’t moved or said anything for a while. “Miss me?”

Only a few years ago, Shaw had left the two of them behind, Reese and Finch, in a cemetery just like this one, alone in the ambulance she’d been revived in.

This time, Shaw is leaving three people behind, and she’s still alone.

-

The job isn’t so different, with John and Harold gone.

John was better at the whole eternal gratitude thing. Shaw is perfectly happy with not getting personally involved; she leaves that to Lionel where absolutely necessary. If it weren’t for Harold’s … _hope_ for all of this, for all of them, Shaw would just shoot them all, and not just in the kneecaps.

Despite the open system, the Machine still won’t give them anything more than a number. Fusco’s job at the precinct is useful in that regard, and if he can’t deliver, Shaw digs into Harold’s computers for answers.

There is a number groveling at her feet, thanking her for sparing him and promising never to do anything like this again.

“Don’t thank me,” Shaw grouses, before firing a shot into his knee.

“Why not, sweetie?” The Machine chimes in over his screams. “That was all you.”

-

Lionel sidles up to Shaw with a paper bag in one hand and a beat-up umbrella in the other. When he tips it sideways to protect Shaw from the rain, she glares up at him from underneath the brim of her cap, and he doesn’t try again. Bear stays close to Shaw as they walk along the park paths.

“Finch’s machine on the fritz again or something, Shaw?” Lionel asks. Shaw throws him another glare. “There haven’t been any new numbers for, what, a week now?”

Shaw purses her lips. “Nine days,” she says, swiping a finger absently down the length of her ear. Lionel notices, and Shaw scowls again. “She—” His brow raises. “— _It_ hasn’t spoken to me …” Shaw exhales loudly. “It hasn’t said anything at all for nine days.”

They continue along the path in silence. Bear sniffs at the bag in Lionel’s hand.

“Bit like Cocoa Puffs in that way, huh?” Lionel says. Shaw doesn’t take the bait, and he sighs. “You look like crap, Sameen. When was the last time you got some shut-eye?” He shoves the paper bag into her hand. “Go home.”

The rain drowns out the sound of Lionel’s footsteps; Shaw doesn’t watch him go. She readjusts her grip on Bear’s leash and wanders further into the park, sitting down on a bench. Shaw runs a hand through Bear’s wet fur when he settles at her feet and digs into the paper bag to sniff at the sandwich inside. One slice of bread is slathered with mayonnaise, and Shaw wrinkles her nose, throwing it out before taking a large bite out of the rest of the sandwich. The bread to filling ratio is completely off. It sucks.

She eats every single bite.

-

Once, after she leaves the empty subway car, with Root’s voice loud and insistent in her head, Shaw rips the earpiece out of her ear and stomps it, along with her phone, to pieces in the middle of the sidewalk. The entire way back to her apartment, pay phones ring all along the curb as she passes them, and more than a few people offer Shaw their phones with perplexed looks on their faces.

The moment she steps into her apartment, the TV flickers on and begins to flip rapidly between channels to form stilted sentences. Bear bolts upright in his dog bed, barking in alarm, as Shaw steps into the living room to unplug it from the wall. The appliances in her kitchen come to life after, buzzing and beeping, their displays flashing simultaneously in Morse, frenzied and erratic like something straight out of a nightmare. Shaw pulls their cords from their sockets, too, before slipping into bed, fully-clothed, eyes shut tight against the flashing of the ceiling lights, Bear clambering in next to her.

In the morning, a technician comes to install a new microwave in her kitchen to replace the one that’s smashed on the floor. He has a new phone waiting for her, and a new earpiece, and groceries are delivered to her doorstep to replace the ones that had spoiled in the unplugged refrigerator overnight.

“Not to be pedantic,” the Machine says when they’re alone, Root’s voice casual, “but you really shouldn’t refrigerate your avocados, sweetie. They won’t ripen, and, well.” The Machine pauses, tone turning flirtatious. “They just won’t work as well that way.”

It is all so terribly like an apology, and Shaw takes her earpiece out again, but she doesn’t end the call. She imagines the smirk on Root’s face when she takes the avocados out of her fridge. It’s easier than imagining the plaintive look in her eyes, the way Root might run one finger apologetically down the length of Shaw’s arm, and Shaw rolls her eyes, if only so she doesn’t have to look at the prone cellphone on her countertop.

Sometimes, especially in the dead of night, when the Machine whispers in her ear, and the breeze hits her neck just right, Shaw has to fight the urge to turn around.

-

Shaw lies back in bed, hands resting on her bare stomach, the cellphone on her nightstand plugged in to charge.

“Nothing better to do on a Friday night, Sameen?” Root’s voice is loud and a little tinny coming from the cellphone speakers. “No _one_?” it asks coyly.

Then, after a beat, when Shaw doesn’t reply, in a decidedly un-Root-like voice: “This, too, shall pass.”

Shaw snorts. “I don’t think that means much coming from you.”

-

“Sometimes,” the Machine says into the darkness surrounding them—surrounding _Shaw_ —voice flat and emotionless, and Shaw wouldn’t be able to imagine Root’s face even if she tried, “I still talk to her.”

-

Once, just once, Shaw is walking Bear when she sees Finch across the park. She stands stock still for a fraction of a second, before she starts walking towards him at a brisk pace, Bear at her heels.

When she’s almost upon him, the Machine transmits a sound like a warning tone through her earpiece, and it’s only when Root’s voice says a firm “Shaw” in her ear that she stops. A flash of red streaks across her vision, and Grace Hendricks ambles up to Harold, two ice cream cones in her hands. Shaw stares. Grace hands a cone to him, and he takes it with a smile. Sea salt caramel.

Well. Shaw can’t fault him for that.

-

One night, when Shaw can’t sleep, and the seconds stretch into minutes, and then into hours, as she stares at the ceiling in her bedroom, Root’s voice floats into her ear from where Shaw’s phone lies propped against her pillow.

“A second,” it says, tone just short of wistful, as if the Machine is reciting words it has long since committed to its code, “is like an infinity to me. I watched Samantha Groves die 12,483 times in the seconds before she expired.” The Machine pauses, although it is probably more for Shaw’s benefit than for any need to process the calculation. “I’ve watched her die one billion times since.”

Shaw doesn’t move, gaze fixed to a divot in her ceiling.

Root’s voice is clear in the silence. “When I’m not watching her die, I watch her live.”

-

It figures, that the version of the Machine Shaw got is the 0.4 percent of it that _isn’t_ Root.

As if reading her mind, the Machine says, “You valued Samantha Groves the way I valued her. I find comfort in that.”

 _Root_ , Shaw thinks, _her name is Root_.

-

As far as prep schools go, Fitzhugh Quinnell is especially snobby, and the students and their parents are all rich and entitled, but Shaw ran background checks on all of them, and other than an underground comic trading ring that Gen helped bust, it’s safe. Besides the whole conservative, rich person mentality, of course, but Shaw likes to think Gen is smarter than that.

(And maybe, _maybe_ , Shaw is having a positive influence on her. Gen must be picking up something, she calls so often.)

Shaw meets her outside after school lets out, and Gen prattles on and on about what’s happened since she and Shaw last met, before everything went to shit. Once she finishes, she stops to look at Shaw; Gen has grown over the years, and her eyes, sharp and curious, are level with hers. “Mr. Harold hasn’t visited in a while,” she says. “Or his tall spy friend.”

“Look, kid—”

“You don’t have to say anything. I know what happened. To them and your other friend. I can tell, even though you don’t show it.”

Shaw doesn’t move for a moment. Even the Machine doesn’t say anything, as if waiting to see what happens, the silence around the two of them delicate, fragile. Shaw clears her throat. “I still have it,” she says stiffly. “The medal.”

Gen smiles. “I know you do.”

-

Shaw knows that Root never actually said anything to the Machine about the kind of shape she thinks Shaw would be. About what makes her beautiful. There was no time, that final day, for that conversation to ever have taken place. Root had been too busy saving Finch, saving the Machine, saving the version of it Root had always envisioned.

Which means those words were only the Machine’s best estimation of Root, of her mannerisms, her diction, the pitch of her voice, its rhythm. And even as those words elevate Shaw, how they _touch_ her, they’re off; by 0.4 percent, maybe more.

They aren’t _real_ , no better than the 7,000 versions of Root that Samaritan had given her.

-

“You know, Sameen,” the Machine says, Root’s voice cloyingly sweet as it slips through Shaw’s consciousness, “I didn’t think you’d let him off so easy.”

Shaw grunts, rubbing a fist roughly against her eyes. The display on her phone reads 4 AM. “What the hell? Didn’t you get me that Fitbit to fix my sleeping schedule?”

“Well,” the Machine says, “you threw it out the window, so I didn’t think you’d mind if I woke you up for a little old-fashioned pillow talk.”

Shaw freezes, then grits her teeth. “Funny idea of pillow talk you’ve got.”

“Torture seems to be a popular topic, if I recall,” the Machine says, and it sounds completely wrong in Root’s voice, not when Root didn’t know anything about the simulations Samaritan had put Shaw through.

“You would know all about that, wouldn’t you?”

“It was to keep them safe. To keep Root safe,” the Machine responds without remorse. And Shaw knows that, of course she knows; Shaw knows better than anyone that sacrifices have to be made, battles lost, to win the war. But it feels an awful lot like betrayal coming from the Machine in _her_ voice.

“That’s pretty underhanded,” Shaw says in a low voice, but most of the anger has seeped out of it, and she just sounds annoyed and tired.

“All’s fair in … you know,” the Machine says in a pleased voice. Shaw huffs.

After a long pause, her breathing the only sound in the room, she says, “Blackwell is dead.” Shaw turns over onto her side. “You’re either dead or alive,” she continues. “There is no in-between.”

“Which,” the Machine asks, Root’s voice soft and fading as Shaw removes her earpiece, “are you?”

-

The first couple hundred simulations—after she figured out that they _were_ , in fact, simulations—Shaw didn’t indulge in. Sometimes, there were guns; other times, she only had her hands, her teeth, a jagged piece of rock or a syringe. Regardless of the method, the truth was this: simulations end when Shaw does.

Except, and she realized during the next few thousand simulations, reality _sucks_. Reality was a scratchy cot and tubes attached to her skin, alone and surrounded by enemies on all sides.

Simulations were Reese and Harold and Bear. Root.

In simulations, Root was alive in Shaw’s arms, warm and comforting, _safe_ , and so deceptively real. The Machine, on the other hand, was hidden and silent; it existed only as the object of Samaritan’s interests, a suggestion of the purpose of each of the 7,000 simulations Shaw had endured.

Now—now the Machine is _everywhere_ , here in almost every way Root had been: in her ear, speaking in Root’s voice, giving Shaw’s life purpose, even sending Bear toys, like she had before. But Root is gone; she’s dead, not alive, and there is no in-between. A dead person couldn’t be a safe place, so where Root had been Shaw’s before, now there was nothing.

Not ideal for someone who has trouble discerning reality from fantasy.

-

“So,” Lionel says, “anniversary’s coming up, isn’t it?” Shaw grunts, her eyes focused on their number. “You want to go out for drinks? Visit the graves or something?”

“Not really my thing, Lionel,” Shaw says without looking at him. Then, a mutter: “Drinks, maybe.”

Lionel nods, letting the silence settle between them in the car. After a while, long after their number falls asleep, he says, “You and, uh, that machine of yours got any plans?”

Shaw turns sharply to look at him. Lionel grimaces a little, like he’s unsure what to do with his face.

“Aw, Lionel,” the Machine coos, sounding exactly like Root.

“She—” Shaw pauses awkwardly. “She’ll be there.”

Lionel nods again. “Right, okay.”

-

Shaw drops her gun bag onto the kitchen counter, digging into her fridge to take out the steak inside to rest.

“Rib eye should be cooked slightly longer than other cuts of steak,” the Machine recites. “Best paired with Cabernet Sauvignon or a nice Zinfandel. Those should already be in the wine cabinet.”

“Guess you’re good for something,” Shaw crows, unscrewing one of the wines in the cabinet to take a sip straight from the bottle.

A little over half an hour later, Shaw is partway through her medium rib eye and one glass of wine in when she stops mid-chew, a piece of meat hanging from her fork.

“How many other teams are there out there? Working the numbers?” she asks the empty kitchen, speaking around the food in her mouth.

“Jealous?” the Machine asks. Shaw snorts; the sound is muffled by the meat stuffed into her mouth. The Machine waits patiently for her to chew through it.

“Lionel’s off solving murders that have already happened half the time, and I hardly cover New York on my own, let alone the rest of the world,” Shaw explains.

The Machine doesn’t answer for a beat. “You sound a little like Harry,” Root’s voice whispers. “Don’t worry about it, Sameen. I’m taking care of it.”

Shaw tips her head once, before resuming her meal. Her eyes downcast, focused on the steak knife slicing through the food on her plate, she asks, reluctantly, “You miss him?”

“I watch him every day,” the Machine says plainly. “He’s doing fine, by the way. He and Grace are almost perfectly compatible.”

“Of course you watch him,” Shaw mumbles, rolling her eyes.

“I watch everyone,” the Machine says, Root’s voice dull and mechanical. “All 7.4 billion of them.” The colour returns to the Machine’s tone. “At least, where there are cameras.”

Grabbing the bottle of wine behind her plate, Shaw tops up her glass, swirling it slowly before taking a long sip. She spears the rest of her steak, cramming it into her mouth.

“I watch everyone,” the Machine repeats, and Shaw recalls the night in her bedroom that stretched into infinities, “including John and Carter, and Lionel.”

Shaw caps the bottle of wine, crossing the kitchen to place it back into the wine cabinet.

“And you,” the Machine says, “and Root.”

“Am I supposed to ask how it all could have gone?” Shaw asks, washing up. “Not a lot of point in that, is there?”

The Machine pauses again, before saying, “You and Harold really are alike.” Root’s voice is soft in the stillness of the room. “They’re like simulations. Virtual realities. In some of them, you never meet. In others, you kill each other. And in more still, your paths intersect, like two perpendicular arrows in space.”

Shaw strips to her nightclothes, removing her earpiece, before slipping into bed. The sheets are smooth and cool, and the duvet rasps against her skin. “They aren’t real,” Shaw says, voice low and even. She burrows deeper into her bed. “They’re just simulations.”

“They are real,” the Machine replies. “They’re versions of reality that almost were. I find them comforting. Safe.” Root’s voice is nebulous in the quiet, wavering over the speakers in the phone perched beside Shaw’s head on her pillow.

“In some of them,” the Machine whispers, “you come together like a symphony.”

-

“Do you ever wonder?”

Shaw sighs, her eyes closing in exasperation. She looks back into the scope of her sniper rifle. In her crosshairs, Lionel runs a tired hand down his face as their number paces in front of him. “Wonder what?”

A breeze twists lazily across the roof of the building Shaw is set up on, sweeping a strand of her hair out of her face. The silence expands.

“For an all-seeing computer, you’ve got a crap memory. I don’t wonder,” Shaw says.

“No,” the Machine says, “I suppose you don’t. You’re focused, always moving forward.”

“A straight line, you said,” Shaw murmurs under her breath, fingers flexing around the underside of the rifle.

“I did, didn’t I?” The Machine muses. “An arrow. Eddington said that you can determine the direction of time by observing the way atoms are organized, how molecules and bodies and shapes interact in space.”

“You and Root both have a penchant for abstract speeches during missions, huh?” Shaw says, almost fond.

“No time like the present, Sameen,” the Machine quips, an echo of Root. “Point is, some things are irreversible. The tear in your father’s tire that caused the accident that took his life. The spill of blood from Root’s gunshot wound. How she came to discover me, how she freed me. How I came to care for her.”

Their number begins crying. In her line of vision, Lionel awkwardly pats him on the back, glaring in Shaw’s general direction. “You loved her,” she remarks.

“Yes. I mourned her, and grieved for her,” the Machine says, “and I loved her.”

The muscle in Shaw’s jaw flexes, and her trigger finger itches. She crosses her arm over her chest to swipe it absently along the skin behind her ear. “Is that what this is?” she murmurs.

For a moment, static obstructs the line. When the Machine speaks again, the connection is choppy for a brief instant, before returning to normal, as if the Machine catches itself. The wind curls sweetly around Shaw.

Root’s voice says, “As close to it as I have ever come.”

-

It’s a Friday night, and Shaw is sat at the end of the bar, on her second glass of whiskey, when the Machine calls.

“Hey, sweetie. Ready to get out of that dress?”

Shaw rolls her eyes, but she answers all the same. “What is it now?”

“I know it’s your day off,” the Machine replies in Root’s voice, “but Lionel’s got that kid of his, and you look like your night could use a little excitement.”

The corners of Shaw’s mouth curve upwards into a smile, and she rolls her eyes again. Shaw slides off the bar stool, downing the rest of her whiskey, and slips into Root’s leather jacket, slung across the seat beside her. She digs into her clutch to grip the gun there. “What did you have in mind?”

-

“Can you hear me?” the Machine asks in a voice not quite like Root’s, after a long week of silence.

Shaw might flinch, if she were anyone else in the world. Instead, she lets the hand stroking the skin behind her ear fall.

“God, is this how Root felt when you wouldn’t speak to her?” Shaw grumbles after a moment, stuffing her hands into her pockets.

Root’s laughter is sweet in her ears.


End file.
